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Posts Tagged ‘your business’

Take your ad out of the yellowpages and save a bundle. Actually, there’s a bit more to say, but most of my customers usually did just that before coming to see me. You see, I counsele 1000’s of clients during my years as a marketing consultant. So, during a recession, customers would ask to cut or remove their ads entirely. Hey, it made perfect sense to them. When business is good, advertise. When it’s bad, don’t. They also probably buy high and sell low in the stock market, too.

I understand that a slow cash flow is hard to cope with and the first inclination is to cut out the overhead. Unfortunately, they think of advertising as overhead. I considered it an extra salesperson that never slept, needed no health benefits, but always worked hard to bring in business. It was tough to convince my customers to stop dumping money in the yellowpages and start getting more for less. Advertising should be the last thing to go especially if you can cut cost and get more leads in the process. Now doesn’t that sound like a win-win?

But invariably some businesses will still remove advertising and hope things would get better on their own. Amazingly, when I see them the following year, things weren’t any better and often, worse. They couldn’t comprehend what was happening, so I tried to explain the situation.

I would start with, “You just made your competitors very happy.” The business owner would look startled. “Why is that?” they might ask. “Because,” I reply, “you aren’t in the yellowpages anymore and that’s great but did you replace it with a lower cost and more effective alternative? No. So when a consumer’s water heater dies and they go searching for a plumber, the other plumbers are there and you aren’t. They get to benefit from less competition. So, even though they pay for the ad, it works better when there are less ads. You did them a favor. I hoped they thanked you.”

Sure, the poor times might cause you to drop the color or reduce a size, but dropping the ad is not the way to help yourself when every customer becomes even more precious. There are other ways to beef up the results of your ad without spending more. In fact, I’ve had some clients spend less and still maintain a successful advertising program. It’s all about the little things and how they are handled. Haven’t you brought your car into the shop for a tune-up? Well, I bet it’s time to trade in that old and dusty yellowpages ad and 104inc.com is your neighborhood low cost and high impact advertising source. They will show you how to create a headline that works and create a slimmer and trimmer ad that can compete for more business. Also, 104inc.com will help you track the results of the ads so you know exactly how it’s doing.

Give your ad a makeover and take it out for a test run with a 45 Day FREE Trial. In a poor or good economy, your advertising can help you bring in customers, if it’s well thought out and created with your business in mind.